


Summer in the City

by Sad Cowboy Malone (NobleMalone)



Series: Kîyanaw [4]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Anal Sex, Begging, Bottom Arthur, Chapter 4 Spoilers, Chapter 5 Spoilers, Come Eating, Comeplay, Cowgirl Position, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Embarrassment Kink, Feminization, Genderplay, Humiliation, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Name-Calling, Oral Sex, Ownership, PWP, Period Typical Attitudes, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Slurs, Spoilers, Sub Arthur Morgan, Top Charles Smith, Topping from the Bottom, gratuitous use of the word Tits, it's gay fellers, oh my god i really did do that didnt i, possessiveness as a BDSM thing, shmoopy gay cowboy romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 07:36:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18231869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NobleMalone/pseuds/Sad%20Cowboy%20Malone
Summary: Charles himself is stretched out shirtless on the big bed, his hair spread like a dark halo around his head when Arthur returns; he’s reading a little yellow book pulled from Arthur’s bag and he doesn’t look up when Arthur enters, so Arthur takes the opportunity to linger by the door for a moment, observing. Takes a minute to admire the hard swell of Charles’s biceps, the way he’s a little soft through the middle but thick and muscular underneath it all. How his brow furrows as he tucks a strand of long, dark hair behind his ear, and how he licks his thumb before he turns the page.---Kîyanaw– Us, inclusive; you and me.





	Summer in the City

**Author's Note:**

> This is a happy fic with no real homophobia, but be aware that slurs such as queer, invert, whore and slut are used throughout the fic.

The room they get in Saint Denis isn’t luxurious by any means, but it’s got real bed, four walls, and a roof that don’t leak when it rains, and that alone puts it miles ahead of Arthur’s own room at Shady Bell.

 

The man who’d rented them the room – a friend of Mr Châtenay’s – had been small and dainty and French, and when Charles had asked for a room for he and Arthur both, the man had smiled, small and knowing. Had simply handed them the room key, and said nothing when Charles placed a soft, guiding hand on the small of Arthur’s back – simply nodded in a way that said just what they needed to hear.

 

Told them that here, in one small way at least, it was safe. They were safe.

 

 

 

When Arthur returns from his bath to their little second-storey room, he feels fresh and new in a way he hasn’t in a long, long time, scrubbed raw and shaved clean as he is.

 

Getting all cleaned up like he is, he thinks, is like putting lipstick on a pig – optimistic, but ultimately a lost cause. Even so, if you gotta fuck a pig, might as well make it the prettiest pig in the pen. Charles deserves that much, at least.

 

 

Charles himself is stretched out shirtless on the big bed, his hair spread like a dark halo around his head when Arthur returns; he’s reading a little yellow book pulled from Arthur’s bag and he doesn’t look up when Arthur enters, so Arthur takes the opportunity to linger by the door for a moment, observing. Takes a minute to admire the hard swell of Charles’s biceps, the way he’s a little soft through the middle but thick and muscular underneath it all. How his brow furrows as he tucks a strand of long, dark hair behind his ear, and how he licks his thumb before he turns the page.

 

That’s what gives him away, really, what lets Arthur know that Charles is well aware of his presence and just _choosing_ not to acknowledge him – the way he licks his thumb, long and slow and with the hint of a smile teasing at the corner of his lips.

 

But Arthur plays along, just for the hell of it – clears his throat as sternly as he can manage, an imitation of the way Mrs Grimshaw'd done just two days past, when she’d found them on the far side of the house at Shady Belle, sharing a smoke and giggling like schoolchildren over some silly joke already forgotten.

 

In response to the noise, Charles just pats the empty space on the bed beside him, not even sparing Arthur a passing glance; he just licks his thumb and turns another page.

 

Petulantly, Arthur flops down beside him, makes to grab the book from Charles’s steady hands, but Charles, the sonuva bitch, is ready, always a step ahead. He holds the book out and away, and plants a big palm right on Arthur’s face when he goes for the book a second time, pushing him away and then they’re both laughing, silly and stupid like kids all over again.

 

They tussle for a while, a boy and his dog, grabbing at one another rough and innocent as they roll around on the bed – Arthur, ever the wild one, maybe bites Charles not once but _twice_ , just to hear how he yelps in surprise before he jams his clever fingers into Arthur’s ribs to tickle him with painful precision.

 

They wrestle like that until Arthur is breathless and gasping with laughter, Charles straddling him and smiling fondly, holding Arthur’s hands above his head as his chest heaves.

 

It ain’t like he couldn’t’ve won if he wanted to; he and Charles are near equally matched in size and strength, and both have had their fair share of bar brawls and back-alley scraps. But with Charles, he don’t mind losing, not like this – likes it, even, so long as it means he gets to be underneath him.

 

So long as it means Charles will lean in to kiss him, soft and sweet as he does now, his hair a cascade like rain sluicing off a metal, soft and ticklish on Arthur’s clean-shaven cheek. He smells like soap and sage and tobacco, and the way he boxes Arthur in with his big body is intoxicating in its power.

 

They kiss for while, lazily at first and then less-so, harder and deeper and hungrier, until Arthur has Charles’s tongue in his mouth, wet and satisfying but not nearly enough. Charles, bless him and keep him, seems to sense this – he withdraws, sitting up to look at Arthur with that familiar, searching gaze, as if the words in Arthur’s heart are written on his face.

 

“Do you want to …?” Charles begins, letting his words fade for Arthur to intuit the rest. They both know the word for what they do isn’t just ‘fucking,’ not anymore, maybe not ever; it’s always been something deeper, hungrier, _truer_ than that.

 

Arthur rolls his hips in response, bumping the bulge of his erection rudely against Charles’s ass.

“Always.”

 

Charles chuckles quietly as he starts on the buttons of Arthur’s shirt, from the top down. The way Charles undresses him, seems to insist on it, it always makes Arthur feel like a gift, eagerly unwrapped.

 

“What about last week?” Charles points out as he works, pushing Arthur’s shirt from his broad, freckled shoulders. “I don’t recall you being so eager, then.

“’Please, Charlie, baby, I can’t, oh Christ I can’t, please, _please_ –“

 

His imitation of Arthur’s desperate panting is uncanny, and the sound of it pulls at something in Arthur’s gut, makes him roll his hips again. Christ; it’s like Charles owns Arthur’s cock, the way he knows how to get him rutting and desperate with just his words.

 

“Four times!” Arthur shouts back anyways, indignation only partially feigned. “Four fuckin’ times, Charles! Could'a sworn I was gonna go dehydrated, you made me go off one more god damn time.”

 

The way Charles leans in after discarding Arthur’s trousers, presses a little nuzzling kiss to the apex of his hairy thigh, his nose bumping gently against Arthur’s balls; it all tells Arthur that Charles is not taking him very seriously.

 

“But you did, didn’t you, _âmômey_?” He says between kisses, each one planted like a seed of arousal, near enough to Arthur’s hard cock to make him sigh with pleasure but far enough away to be nothing more than teasing.

“You were so good for me then, _nîwah_ , weren’t you? Letting me get you off like that, letting me push you, coming on just my fingers the way you know I love. Five times for me. And don’t tell me you didn’t like it.”

 

Arthur _had_ liked it, truly; had begged and pleaded when he’d felt wrung dry and ready to collapse, but the way Charles had coaxed and cajoled him – “One more time, _pêpîsis_ , for me, please,” – had had him shooting off weak and ruined in the sheets, dribbling pathetically over Charles’s tight fist. Afterwards, Charles had rewarded him by fucking his face, slow and gentle as if Arthur were a dainty maiden, and had come down his throat in long, lazy pulses.

 

Arthur won’t give Charles the satisfaction of admitting to it though, even if the blush that’s leaked from his face all the way down to his chest betrays him. Instead, he just pats the side of Charles’s head roughly, tries to coax that sweet, filthy mouth to where Arthur’s cock is lying, flushed dark and leaking, on his stomach.

 

For his efforts, Charles bites him quick and vicious in reprimand on the soft flesh of his inner thigh; bites him hard not once but _twice_ before he laves his tongue over the sore spots in a way that might be apologetic, if he weren’t so damn smug about the way it makes Arthur moan when he does it.

 

Then, as if to continue the torture of it, he runs the tip of his tongue up the underside of Arthur’s cock, from the base to the tip in one smooth, slick motion.

 

 Arthur grips the bedsheets tight to keep himself from trying to lead, from pushing Charles to where he needs him; makes himself be good the way Charles makes him good.

 

“Please, Charles, suck my cock, please?” he gasps unprompted, and then, because he knows Charles well enough now to know what gets him going, how to get what he wants by giving, he adds, low and breathy and desperate; “Just for a minute or two, please, Charles, just the tip, even, just let me feel it, please. Promise, I’ll be so good, so good for you, just a little suck job, only for a minute, _please_.”

 

That does the trick.

 

Arthur’s smile, smug from getting his way like the cat that got the cream, doesn’t last long at all; it’s soon replaced by clenching teeth and eyes squeezed shut as, all at once, Charles takes Arthur’s cock into the warm, wet heat of his mouth. Sinks all the way down in one fluid motion to nuzzle his nose in the coarse pubic hair at the base of Arthur’s cock, tongue gliding expertly over the underside of the shaft. As Charles draws back up, impossibly slow, Arthur allows himself to run a hand through Charles’s dark hair, just to feel the way it slides through his fingers, to feel it soft under his palm as Charles begins to move.

 

He’s had Charles’s mouth a couple times now, on the rare occasion Charles deems him worthy of the privilege; a way to bring him back down to earth after Charles’s filthy mouth and firm fingers have sent him flying, or a frantic fumble in a few found moments between waking and breakfast, or a reward for a job particularly well-done.

 

Every time, it’s been good, better than good, and Arthur’s come quick and hard and begging, but this – this time feels different. Not better, maybe, just _more_ , as if they’re building to something bigger.

 

Something Arthur’s wanted since that moment, months ago, when he’d been desperately fucking his fist in his little tent the night after they'd met, and the sudden, intrusive image of Charles bending him over a fence rail and fucking him in the ass like a thirsty milkmaid had had Arthur shooting off sudden and sticky, like he was seventeen again.

 

 

 

Charles draws back, lets Arthur’s cock slip from his full bottom lip and presses the tip of his tongue to the strange, sensitive place where the head meets the shaft. Smiles as he does it, looking up at Arthur through his eyelashes and Christ, does he look good like that; even playing at coy the way he is, the set of his shoulders and the quirk of his lips exude such a bold confidence, an innate power that has Arthur groaning, closing his eyes to keep from coming just at the sight of him.

 

Arthur takes Charles’s hand, then, presses two of those thick, dark fingers into his mouth and sucks, the way Charles always says makes him look like a whore trying to lure in a gullible john. He really should ask, follow the rules and beg for it, he knows this, but Charles doesn’t chide him for it; just presses his fingers against Arthur’s soft, pliant tongue. Slides them deeper into Arthur’s mouth before drawing them out, and then just like that he’s fucking Arthur’s mouth slow and easy with his fingers, even as he leans down to swallow Arthur’s cock again.

 

Arthur'll come like this, he knows it, can already feel it building in his gut – their circuit complete, one inside the other, two queers so inverted they’ve molded to one another, like a canyon carved by a river or leather worked soft around a hard fist. Christ, is he gonna come from this, unload in Charles’s hot, wet, clever mouth and watch him swallow it all, kiss the taste from his mouth like a dirty –

 

“Don’t.”

 

The command is quiet and stern, but playful as Charles sits up, wraps his big hand around the base of Arthur’s cock so tight it nearly hurts; _would_ hurt, if it didn’t feel so god damn _good_. Still, it does the job, and Arthur is yanked back from the edge of orgasm with a sudden jerk.

 

“I want to try something different,” Charles says then, sultry-like, and the way his hand slides slow and suggestive over Arthur’s cock is reminder enough of what’d gotten Arthur so fired up in the first place. “Let me, _nîwah_?”

 

“Sure.”

Arthur loves the word just for the way it puts a smile on Charles’s face, as if he’d just been promised the moon.

 

When Charles withdraws to pull off his trousers, Arthur takes a moment to admire his body; it’s rare they get time like this, where they are both naked and bare and unhurried and can take the time to not just look at, but truly _see_ one another.

 

He wants to commit Charles’s body memory, piecing that strong, stoic form together like a jigsaw in his mind. The purple, raised, ropey scar on his thigh, clean and straight as the blade of the knife what did it; the shiny pink lines on his hips and ass where muscle had outgrown skin and stretched it thin, once, when he’d been a man growing out of the skin of a boy; the proud posture of his cock, rising from a thatch of dark curls, flushed and thick with desire.

 

The thought of that cock, thick and long and unforgiving as the steel barrel of a gun, is all it takes to have Arthur begging; The way Charles strokes himself for Arthur’s benefit, long and slow and just a little bit dramatic, is a bonus.

 

“ _Christ_ , Charles,” Arthur murmurs, and if it’s low and reverent and embarrassingly adoring, it’s no one but Charles’s fault for having bred that adoration into him.

“I want it in me, please, I want your cock so bad. Want you to fuck me so hard I feel it tomorrow, so hard I can’t hardly sit down without thinking of your cock in my ass. Want you to rearrange my god damn _guts_ with that pipe of yours, come inside me 'til I’m soaked through and leaking like a girl for you. Wanna go off with you fuckin’ me proper, want you to fuck it out of me, please, Charles, _please_.”

 

Charles laughs indulgently then, gives his own cock a squeeze and shuts his eyes tight for a moment, breathes in deep as if trying to summon patience from somewhere within himself, as if Arthur has made him lose it. When he opens them, fixes them on Arthur, those dark eyes are alight with a mischievous spark and it’s like he can see the gears in Charles’s head start turning.

 

“What about what I want, _nîwah_?” he asks then, crawling back onto the bed. Voice teasing and deceptively sweet, even as he pinches Arthur’s nipple and _twists_ , just to hear the way it makes him shout as he writhes from the pleasant pain of it.

 

“Always so concerned with what you want, as if you’ve ever had a say.”

 Runs his finger along the hard line of Arthur’s stubbled jaw, down his neck and over his chest, all the way down to the soft, vulnerable spot behind his balls; presses gently, just enough pressure to have Arthur moan, make him spread his legs like a working girl – as if trying to coax Charles inside just by opening up.

 

Charles’s eyes flick from Arthur’s face to his cock and back again.

“Do you not realize you’re mine, _takahkatim_ , that I own you?”

 

“Yes,” Arthur manages to hiss through his clenched teeth, “yes, fuck, I’m yours, Charles, now _please._ ” It’s the first time Charles has said it, and even if Arthur already knows it, hearing it sends a thrill down his spine that has him rocking his hips up against nothing.

 

It’s then that Charles swings his leg over Arthur like mounting a horse, straddling him, even squeezes Arthur with his thick thighs as he rolls his own hips, just once, and pats Arthur roughly on the cheek as if he were that same restless stallion. Takes Arthur’s chin in his big hand, forces their eyes to meet, and if Arthur wasn’t struck by the sudden change of pace, he is by the intensity of the desire in those dark eyes.

 

“So ask me what I want, _nîwah_.”

 

“What do you want, Charles?”

In that moment, it’s the only question that’s ever mattered.

 

But Charles doesn’t answer; just smiles that patient, knowing, _wicked_ smile of his and reaches back, lifts Arthur’s cock from where its lying neglected, hard and throbbing on his belly. Uses his other hand to spread himself and sinks, slow and sinuous, onto Arthur’s cock with little more than a soft, breathy gasp that anyone but Arthur might miss.  

 

He is hot and slick and impossibly tight, tighter than Arthur could’ve imagined, tighter than he ever remembers anything ever being. Somehow, though, through the tight squeeze and the overwhelming feeling of being _inside_ , Arthur realizes with a startled, strained laugh, just how Charles might’ve kept himself busy while Arthur’d been bathing.

 

If he weren’t already flat on his back, Arthur’d be bowled over by the sensation – as it is, Charles has him pinned to the bed like this, sitting in Arthur’s lap with Arthur up to the hilt in his ass, using his weight to keep him from bucking like an angry bull.

 

Charles sits there, stoic and unmoving, for what feels like an eternity, staring down at Arthur with such an amused intensity that he can’t help the way his cheeks flush with embarrassment, and the way he blushes only serves to make Charles smile in that too-fond, infuriating way that always makes Arthur feel like a vulnerable virgin, feeds into that fantastic feedback loop of shame-love-shame.

 

Arthur throws an arm over his own face then, more for his own embarrassed comfort than to actually hide, and groans impatiently.

 

“What’s the matter, _nîwah_?” At least Charles is amused by the torture he’s inflicting – Arthur feels he might die, the way he can feel his pulse beating in his cock like a perverted drum.

 

Arthur makes an attempt to roll his hips in place of a real response; gives a frustrated moan when he can’t even manage that with Charles seated the way he is.

 

“Tell me how it feels.” Charles says smugly, as if he doesn’t already know, as if he can’t feel the way Arthur is strung tight and tense already, nails digging into the soft flesh of his hip, cock throbbing inside him.

 

“Like I’m gonna come hard enough to shoot holes through a god damned milk pail and still fill it full.”

 

That makes Charles laugh, and Christ, Arthur can _feel_ it. The sound he makes at that is less of a moan and more of a tortured sob of anguished arousal.

 

“Don’t,” Charles says through his laughter, bringing a warm hand to pry Arthur’s arm away from his hot, flushing face; leads Arthur’s work-roughened hand to where Charles’s cock stands flushed and leaking, dripping like hot wax onto Arthur’s abdomen. “Not yet.”

 

That’s all Charles says before he begins to move, and whatever else Arthur’d had to say is struck from his brain by the lightning bolt of pleasure that follows, intense and sudden, as Charles rolls through the motions like a well-seasoned rider on a well-trained mare.

 

Even seated astride Arthur with a cock up his ass and Arthur’s hand stroking him clumsy and stupid, Charles manages all the airs and confidence of a man, thick thighs hard and flexing as he moves in sinuous waves. Even being inside him, Arthur feels like he’s the one getting fucked and used, like all he’s good for is getting Charles off, especially with the way Charles works himself in rolling motions on the mast of Arthur’s cock, the way he palms Arthur’s chest and pinches his nipples 'til they’re red and ruddy like a whore's.

 

“Jesus, _nîwah_ , your tits,” Charles gasps, low and hungry, and it’s the most unhinged Arthur’s ever heard him; the sound of it makes Arthur’s cock pulse desperately as Charles clenches around him.

“Let me make a mess of them, tell me you want that.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, yes, Charles, Christ.” Arthur feels breathless with it, can’t help the rasping moan that escapes when Charles throws his head back, exposing the long line of his neck and the strong angle of his jaw.

“Please, I want you to. Shoot your load on, on –“ his voice cracks, cheeks flushed anew, swallowing the embarrassed lump in his throat, ” – on my tits. Cover me in it, like a, a god damn girl, your filthy slut, make me yours, you own me, please.”

 

“My girl,” Charles repeats, and the smile on his face, in his voice, is blinding and warm like sunlight. “So good for me, _nîwah_ , so good. Tell me you like it, too.”

 

Arthur can’t find the words, not with the way Charles is riding him; muscular thighs working like the pistons of a stream engine, ass tight and firm as if he were riding at a breakneck gallop. Even Arthur’s hands have stopped working, every ounce of him instead focused on the heat of it, the intensity, the mounting pressure of orgasm building like a bonfire as he watches Charles ride, lose himself to it in a way Arthur’s never seen before.

 

“Charles, fuck, I – I, please, I – “

 

“You feel so good in me, _nîwah_ ,” Charles gasps, and even for a man whose lost his composure, he’s still got the breath and the wits to talk Arthur up to the peaks of arousal, have him teetering dangerously on the edge of orgasm.

“Make me feel good, _sîwanos_ , I want to feel you tomorrow. Make me feel you, _nîwah_. Fuck me.”

 

Arthur can’t help himself, not when Charles says it like that; he’s beholden to Charles’s will and in love with the way Charles looks, loose and untethered, as he uses Arthur’s cock to bring himself off.

 

He rolls his hips up to meet Charles on the downstroke, hitting deep as Charles fucks him, and the sound Charles makes – low and soft, sure, but deep and long, like the sound of distant thunder – Arthur swears he can feel it shake through the core of them both.

 

“Charles, Christ, god, I can’t – I’m gonna – _please_ –“

 

Suddenly, he misses Charles’s mouth, cranes his neck for a kiss, but the angle isn’t right; Charles, in his infinite wisdom and charity, seems to sense Arthur’s desperation, his nearness to going off hot and sudden deep inside. Places one big, gentle hand on Arthur’s cheek and presses the thumb of it to Arthur’s open mouth, pushes it inside to drag over his tongue, and that is enough, that’s all it takes for Arthur to come.

 

 

“That’s it, _nîwah_ , my girl, so good for me, give it up,” Charles manages to coo, even as Arthur is shooting off inside him, pulse after pulse like the ceaseless battering of ocean waves on the rocky shore, convulsing with it until he's limp and boneless and shuddering through the aftershocks of it.

 

It takes only a couple moments more, Charles stroking himself with a tight fist, to have him following Arthur off that same cliff and spilling his spend in streaks over the planes of Arthur’s firm stomach and the gentle swell of his chest. The few drops that land on Arthur’s chin are dutifully swept between his lips by Charles’s ever-attendant thumb, bitter and alkaline on Arthur’s tongue but perfect none the less.

 

 

Hair damp with sweat, long dark strands clinging to his face and eyes gone bright and soft like candle light the way they always seem to after he’s fucked Arthur good, Charles leans forward to lap at the seed spilled on Arthur’s chest; he mouths at Arthur’s admittedly sorry excuse for a pair of tits, small and muscle-firm as they are, until Arthur is overwhelmed by the feel of it, even as his spent cock slips from Charles’s ass. The feel of his own jism spilling out after, making a mess of the both of them, has him moaning weakly, feels like he could be coming all over again if Charles hadn’t already wrung him dry.

 

When Charles kisses him, slow and sleepy and love-drunk, his mouth tastes bitter and perfect, and he has left a patchwork of red and purple suck-marks across Arthur’s chest, clustered like a shotgun blast over the spot where his heart's supposed to be.

 

Arthur’s starting to think he just might have one, these days.

 

 

“How do you feel, _nîwah_?” Charles asks as he flops over, groping blindly for the half-pack of cigarettes left on the nightstand. He’s still looking at Arthur, and somehow, it manages to draw colour to his cheeks – he’s sweaty and brainless and fucked loose but Charles still looks at him like he’s the sunrise after a long, dark night.

 

Arthur wriggles out of the wet spot they’ve made on the mattress – there’s something to be said for fucking in the dirt, the evidence much shorter lived and fewer blankets ruined – and into the curve of Charles’s waiting arm, tucking himself against the solid, unshakable mass of him.

 

“Like I just had some big man come 'n’ rob me of my delicate flower and ladylike sensibilities.” Says it high and airy, like Molly might, just to watch the way smoke puffs from between Charles’s lips as he laughs. “I’m a fallen woman now, Charles.”

 

“You’re a fallen _something_ , alright.”

 

They laugh some more, and Arthur cranes his neck upwards, lips parted; Charles dutifully holds this cigarette to his expectant lips, runs his free hand through Arthur’s sweaty hair.

 

“I liked it long,” he says wistfully, idly twisting a short strand of Arthur’s hair around his finger – it’s barely long enough to get a handful of now, cropped short and tight and respectable as it is.

 

“Me too,” Arthur admits through a sigh of cigarette smoke, before resting his head back on Charles’s chest to hear where his heart beats, slow and steady like the ticking of a clock. A source of permanence in his otherwise tumultuous life.

“But tomorrow’s a big day. You know how it is.”

 

Charles just hums in agreement and they fall into silence, though it is not as comfortable or contented as it usually feels; as if there’s words waiting to be said, still hanging in the air like lingering smoke from their burned down cigarette.

 

 

After a long moment, Arthur breaks the spell, same as he always does.

 

“Listen, Charles,” he begins, head still pillowed on the man’s chest, eyes trained firmly on the ornate pattern of the peeling wallpaper. “If anything happens tomorrow – “

 

“ _Nîwah_ , don’t.”

 

“But if shit goes wrong tomorrow, Charles, if it’s my life on the line again, you – “

 

“I said _don’t_ , Arthur.”

 

Charles’s voice is soft and quiet, but dangerous, with the hard, cold edge of a knife. The fear in it, the way his voice wavers, unnoticeable to anyone who doesn’t know it the way Arthur does, cuts him just the same.

 

There’s a moment’s silence before Charles speaks again, where Arthur can hear the deep draw of a quivering breath from where his ear is pressed to the wall of Charles’s chest, the slow, smooth exhale.

 

When he speaks again, Charles’s voice is stoic and steady, carefully contained, but raw all the same.

 

“I can’t say what’s going to happen tomorrow, and I can’t pretend that there’s certainty we’ll both make it out alive.

“But this?”

 

 He presses a hand to Arthur’s cheek, coaxes him to lift his head and turn, to meet Charles’s dark eyes with his own. They are as intense as the first day they’d met, and they bore into Arthur, burn into the very meat of him to reach the soft, sensitive, _scared_ parts of him.

 

“This is real. It’s the first real thing I’ve had in a long time, maybe the only real thing I’ve got right now, and I’m prepared to die for it. And I have to believe that if it’s worth dying for, it might as well be worth living for, too.

“You understand, _nîwah_?”

 

“Sure.”

Arthur’s never had a way with words – wishes he did now, just so he could use them to soothe the deep lines anxiety draws into Charles’s face now.

 

Charles laces their fingers together, and the light-and-dark pattern of their fingers interwoven reminds Arthur of the keys in a piano – each key filling in a blank in the scale, a spot the others cannot fill and a sound they cannot replicate. Only together do they form a whole, round-about octave, a complete circuit.

 

“Just, promise me that whatever happens tomorrow, no matter what happens, promise me you will not go anywhere I cannot follow you. Promise me that, _nitêh._ ”

 

“Alright, Charles.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In the brief moments between when his head hits the canvas of the cot and when he is swept up into the dark nothingness of exhausted sleep, Arthur thinks of two things, that first night he spends in Guarma.

 

The first is the way Charles’s back had looked, the way his long hair had fluttered in the night breeze as he’d slowly transitioned to an all-out sprint, an eternity ago in Saint Denis; how he’d loped off graceful as a dancer, with all the strength and power of a bare-knuckled boxer, and how Arthur could only hear his voice, soft and stern in his mind as he’d watched Charles go; _do not go where I cannot follow you_.

 

Lying there in the wet Guarmanian heat – and he’d thought Lemoyne was bad – hungry and sweaty and sunburned and miserable, his last resentful thought is a little less profound than that.

 

He thinks, through the fog of heatstroke, of how he will die on this God-forsaken shithole of an island, and for all he’s seen and done in his thirty-odd years on this miserable planet, he never got to feel Charles’s cock in his ass. If that ain’t his greatest regret in life, then he don’t know what is.

**Author's Note:**

>  _âmômey_ \- honey  
>  _nîwah_ \- my wife  
>  _pêpîsis_ \- baby  
>  _takahkatim_ \- good dog, good horse  
>  _sîwanos_ \- sweet food, sweet thing  
>  _nitêh_ \- my heart  
> for notes on the use of Cree language in this fic and a short list of resources, please see the notes on the first fic :3
> 
> Title comes from Regina Spektor's [Summer in the City](https://youtu.be/3mHEYtz-0dc). The alternate porn clickbait title for this fic was "man gets cucked by his own big top boyfriend"
> 
> I wrote this whole fic just so I could write about Arthur being afraid he'd die without getting dicked down by his boyf. IT'S FUNNY. I thought about not posting this fic until the next one is up so people don't get sad, but with finals coming up who knows when that will be. BUT REST ASSURED, THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING. Arthur lives and he WILL get dicked down by is boyf in Kîyanaw 5 
> 
> as always, you're cordially invited to scream with me about arthur's thirst and charles's dummy thicc thighs on [tumblr](https://assless-chapstick.tumblr.com).


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